Apple Is Struggling To Fill iAd Spaces Says Techcrunch

According to insiders speaking to Techcrunch, Apple’s iAd service is underperforming relevant to their expectations.

In fact, what was meant to be a service that would turn online and in-app advertising on its head has struggled to find many advertisers at all.

According to Techcrunch, while developers are keen to embrace iAd, the business sector is not. The fill rate (or percentage of paid ads to placeholder ads) has dropped from 18% to just 6%.

There’s many possible reasons for this that have nothing to do with iAd being a dud, including a bad economy or seasonal trends. That said, iAd’s demand a certain degree of excellence from advertisers who must effectively program an interactive in-app app every time they want to advertise their product. That’s a lot of work for one platform, especially for a lot of suits who are used to just buying a billboard or a few Google Adwords and calling it a day.

Apple, it seems, needs to do a better job of selling iAds. The app community is enthusiastic, but the actual advertisers are going to need some elbow twisting if this crazy endeavor is going to pay off.

About the author:

John Brownlee is a Contributing Editor. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.